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An End of Hanna-Barbera at DC Comics?

Published Mon, 21 Jan 2019 11:30:31 -0600

Bleeding Cool already reported that Scooby Doo Apocalypse is canceled with issue 36 in April. However, I am told that this isn't down to sales, a natural end, or need for a creative refresh. I am told not to expect any more of the Hanna-Barbera reinventions known as Hanna-Barbera Beyond that DC Comics has published over the last two-and-a-half years, that have been both critically acclaimed and profitable for the publisher.

Bleeding Cool has been told by good sources that all the Hanna-Barbera properties will be canned at DC Comics this year. It's all down to the Warner Bros executive in charge of the licensing of these properties to DC who is increasingly unhappy with the way the characters have been reinvented, from a 1950s gay playwright version of Snagglepuss, the topically politically satirical Flintstones or, indeed, the post-apocalyptic Scooby Doo.

While the likes of Archie Comics is happy to reinvent their characters in a variety of forms aimed at adult audiences, from raw horror, to teen sex drama, and spawning the likes of the Riverdale and Sabrina TV series, Warner Bros has decided that's not the direction they want for the Hanna-Barbera intellectual properties.

Whether that also means canning of DC Comics' all-ages Where Are You Scooby Doo? comic which they continue to publish, I don't know. But odds are good.

But where ever they end up in the future, expect a more classic approach. Maybe the folks at American Mythology who publish the Pink Panther comics in just that style may want to make a bid?

Maybe they should have just stuck with Future Quest…